Electronic article surveillance (“EAS”) systems detect the presence of small electronic devices placed on or in an article or carried by a person of interest, and are often used in retail or library environments to deter theft or other unauthorized removal of articles. These devices, which are commonly known as tags or markers, have typically contained only information regarding the presence of an item. This information could be obtained by electronically interrogating the tag, either intermittently or continuously. Examples of EAS systems including the following: U.S. Pat. No. 4,260,990; U.S. Pat. No. 4,251,808; U.S. Pat. No. 4,872,018; U.S. Pat. No. 4,135,183; U.S. Pat. No. 6,081,238.
Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) technology has become widely used in virtually every industry, including transportation, manufacturing, waste management, postal tracking, airline baggage reconciliation, and highway toll management. A typical RFID system includes a plurality of RFID tags, at least one RFID reader or detection system having an antenna for communication with the RFID tags, and a computing device to control the RFID reader. The RFID reader includes a transmitter that may provide energy or information to the tags, and a receiver to receive identity and other information from the tags. The computing device processes the information obtained by the RFID reader. Examples of RFID antenna systems or non-contact integrated circuit reader/writer systems including the following: U.S. Pat. Publication No. 2003/0063034; Japanese Patent Publication No. 2003-347830; Japanese Patent Publication No. 2000-036019; and U.S. Pat. No. 6,163,305.
A variety of passport readers are known in the art. One example of a passport reader is commercially available from 3M Company based in St. Paul, Minn. and 3M AiT, Ltd. based in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, as the 3M™ Full Page Reader (formerly sold as the AiT™ imPAX™ Reader).